Kiss and Tell

by Fiona Walker

  ‘They drugged me!’ Nell complained groggily on the way back to West Oddford.

  ‘You’re overreacting.’ Dillon had become immune to her tantrums.

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Shh!’ He indicated the girls behind them.

  On the back seat, Pom and Berry were hyper with excitement. ‘Can Zuzi come to a sleepover next time we’re here? Can she? Can she?’

  ‘God preserve me,’ said Nell. ‘I’m going to Amsterdam to see Milo next time you’re here.’

  ‘Why would your dog be in Amsterdam?’ piped Pom.

  ‘Not that Milo.’

  Dillon was temporarily spared his peacemaker role as his hands-free rang. It was his father calling from Ireland.

  ‘Who is this Sylva Frost bitch, eh? Should I be worried?’

  ‘On the evidence I’ve seen, Dad, you should be very worried.’ Dillon hung up, deciding that for now he would store his Get Out of Jail Free card under the game board. Having Nell in play might mean three hotels in Mayfair and landing in Bond Street more often than he’d choose, but Sylva had a Community Chest and Fleet Street in her pocket, and that was infinitely more dangerous.

  Chapter 47

  Left in charge of thirty horses, Tash knew she had no choice but to start riding again, as well as mucking in and mucking out, clipping and grooming and sorting paperwork. Still gripped by fear, she put it off as long as she could, even though Hugo inevitably asked after the horses’ progress every time he called from America.

  ‘They’re all going great,’ she’d say vaguely.

  ‘And Lough?’

  ‘Hardly see him,’ she could report more truthfully, knowing that if Hugo thought about it he’d realise that if she were riding, she’d inevitably cross paths more with Lough who was on a horse most of day, but it was easy to avoid him on two feet.

  The New Zealander certainly showed no signs of wanting to engage in conversation, and worked incredibly long hours. Tash often saw the lights of the indoor school still glowing late into the evening. She gave him a wide berth, both because Hugo’s warning had made her fear him and his secrets, but also because she was too embarrassed to let anybody see her on a horse, least of all the current eventing world champion.

  The first time she got back in the saddle she chose Mickey Rourke, the steadiest ride on the yard, and waited until everybody was out of the way to tack him up and lead him to the mounting block, where she stood beside seventeen hands of dappled grey stupidity, palms sweating. She felt so sick and anxious that she nearly flunked it, but Beetroot – ecstatic to see her mistress getting in the plate again – had already walked purposefully to the main gates where she was waiting, milky eyes blinking and tail wagging in anticipation of a long run across the downs. Tash didn’t have the heart to let her old dog down, although all her nerves could take was a short loop around the village, which suited Beetroot, who was starting to suffer from arthritis as well as poor sight. Afterwards, the dog gratefully flopped down on a discarded stable rug and gazed up as Tash dismounted, her legs like jelly and her ankles aching, feeling as though she had just ridden around Badminton, not Maccombe. She was absolutely victorious, but also dismayed to realise just how unfit and unnatural she now was.

  Over the coming fortnight, she steeled herself to hack out alone on the safest horses, deliberately timing her exit so that the yard staff would be busy and she could avoid company.

  Yet she soon found she had a regular outrider because Lough had a disturbing habit of appearing from nowhere, hijacking her solitary excursions like a ghostly highwayman. Despite Tash’s best efforts to ride alone without the scrutiny of any critical eyes, he’d suddenly trot up alongside her out hacking or reappear from his lunch break after just ten minutes, riding into the indoor school when she’d been certain she’d have an hour to herself. He never said anything beyond a grunt of a hello to accompany the nod of his head. He existed so deeply within himself he hardly seemed to even notice her. Yet Tash, who was used to co-riding with Hugo, swapping observations and tips, found this silent presence threatening.

  ‘Isn’t it funny we keep choosing the same route?’ she said to him when he’d ridden up beside her for the third day in a row, even through she’d deliberately chosen a bridleway nobody used much because of its fiddly gates.

  ‘Not particularly,’ he shrugged, looking across at her with those amazing dark eyes, always so watchful and guarded. She had a feeling that he was waiting for her to say something else, but she was too nervous to risk it, continuing the ride in all too awkward silence, trying to pretend he wasn’t there.

  Afterwards, she couldn’t help worrying that by being so unfriendly she would in fact exacerbate any tension between him and Hugo. The Beauchamps had hardly been welcoming hosts, and Lough had clearly been through a nightmare before arriving. His stern aloofness was understandable, particularly if she was fuelling the fire by coming across as cold and snooty. It might all be so easily overcome with a few kindly gestures.

  Although Hugo had her warned against being over-friendly, she saw no harm in making a peace offering, and so crammed a basket with jams and biscuits from the farm shop, along with a slightly burned home-made sponge cake, which she left outside the lodge cottage door.

  There was no word of thanks. When he appeared in the indoor school the next day, she asked him if he’d received them and he looked at her curiously: ‘I gave them to Lem. I hate jam. You know that.’

  Trying not to feel offended, Tash probed the staff as casually as possible.

  ‘Is he very shy?’ she asked Lemon, but he laughed at this so much he couldn’t speak. Then she asked Beccy if she found Lough standoffish, and her stepsister blew a sarcastic raspberry, saying, ‘And some!’

  ‘And some is as handsome does,’ Tash muttered, none the wiser and feeling increasingly uneasy.

  She redoubled her efforts to stay out of sight when she was in the saddle. Her cowardice appalled her, and didn’t melt away as she had hoped after a few more hours on horseback. If anything, she felt even more frozen, stiff and incapable. Her fear and lack of fitness made her increasingly withdrawn and uncommunicative with everyone on the yard, not wanting to undermine morale by showing that one half of the Beauchampions had totally lost her nerve and her knack.

  Beccy was sensitive enough to see what was going on, but she said nothing, even when Lemon began to grumble that Tash was too grand for them. Since the fated party he had become her closest ally. They were both feeling the effects of Faith deserting the Haydown yard to work more hours with the Moncrieffs. On a practical level, those days that she didn’t drive up the hill the yard looked scruffy and slipshod, and everybody was left chasing their own tails. On an emotional level, the bond between Beccy and Lemon became increasingly close as Faith’s sensible judgement was not there to call upon and Lemon had to deal with Beccy’s mounting insecurity and neediness on a day-to-day basis, most especially her guilt, which he felt was completely misplaced.

  ‘I can’t even look Tash in the face,’ she lamented tearfully one evening as they shared cheesy microwaved baked potatoes in their flat.

  ‘Hardly surprising, the way she’s riding,’ he sneered. ‘She is so bad. I can’t believe she was on the British team once. She makes Hugo look good.’

  ‘I can’t bear it that he’s gone,’ Beccy then sobbed.

  Lemon waited patiently for the tears to abate, polishing off her potato while she snivelled her way back to sensibility. He missed Faith’s company more than he cared to admit. Beccy was okay company on her less flaky days, and he felt very protective around her, but Faith was his sparring partner. She defused his tetchiness.

  Having Lough in England and being accountable to him again made the little Kiwi very tetchy indeed, because he could clearly see what nobody else had even noticed: Lough was infatuated with Tash.

  ‘How are the horses going?’

  ‘Great – River’s flatwork really moved up a notch today,’ Tash exaggerated.

  ‘What botch
?’

  ‘Notch!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Up a notch!’

  Tash missed Hugo’s company so acutely that she day-dreamed conversations while she worked, and at night dreamed of erotic reunions in all sorts of bizarre settings, from her late grandmother’s apartment in Paris’s seventh arrondissement to a horsebox parked on the hard shoulder of the M4. In contrast, their real-life phone conversations were frustratingly prosaic, not helped by Hugo’s tendency to call her from horseback, meaning she had to shout to be heard.

  ‘I knew you’d fall straight back in to it as soon as you started again,’ he said now, having at least stopped trotting so they could speak normally.

  ‘It’s falling straight back off I’m worried about,’ Tash replied, knowing she was still far from back to her old self, but Hugo was already chattering about life at the Johanssens’ winter training barn. The lecture–demos were a sell-out, he reported; the horses were doing great; Rory was trying his heart out and impressing everyone with his dedication, especially MC and Kirsty. ‘Women love that boy. Can’t think why – he’s totally cocksure and thoughtless, but has so much charm and talent they flight each other to flirt with him.’

  ‘Sounds like you before marriage changed you,’ Tash reminded him, but it came out sounding wrong, as though getting married had somehow gelded him. She was uncomfortably aware that he was currently based with not one but two ex lovers, having dated Kirsty not long before they got together, when Tash was still with Niall.

  She’d briefly played with the idea of taking the children to Florida and turning up out of the blue, even for just a week. Their marriage needed a big gesture to get it back on track, but it was impossible to leave the house and yard. Her big gesture right now was the silent, all-consuming one that took place behind the scenes as she worked twelve-hour days on the yard and in the office.

  ‘The children send their love,’ she told him now. ‘Well, a “gaa” from Amery and a “wery beeeg keeess” from Cora, who’s developing a Czech accent,’ she giggled.

  Hugo was less amused. ‘Better knock that on the head,’ he told her before he rang off, leaving Tash feeling irritated that juggling yard, office and home now also involved toddler elocution lessons.

  No longer fazed by the eccentricities of England and the Beauchamps, Veruschka had taken increasing charge of domestic life at Haydown. The little Czech micromanaged the children and the running of house with supreme efficiency, and had made it her mission to take control of the Haydown mess through the winter months, using Vasilly as her strongman. Spending ever longer hours in the saddle, Tash’s grip over her home life slipped further and further from her fingers. She felt like a stranger in her own home and kept falling over furniture that had been moved while she was out.

  Tash complained about it to Sophia when she called one evening to discuss party-planning.

  ‘You have to exert your authority,’ Sophia insisted. ‘I briefed all my nannies regularly.’ Absurdly, this made Tash think of supplying her au pair with a weekly quota of knickers. But her sister’s focus remained on Hugo’s fortieth birthday. ‘I knew there was no point waiting for you to come up with a guest list, so I photocopied your address book when we were staying with you at Christmas, and also sent myself Hugo’s email contacts. I’ve whittled it down to about two hundred.’

  ‘Isn’t that rather a lot for a surprise party?’ Tash gulped, trying not to think of the cost.

  ‘Not a problem if one plans it right by staggering the list – closest friends and family spring the big reveal, then the remainder of the guests arrive afterwards. I’ve already sent the invitations to be printed, and I’ve contacted Marysia, who does all my outside catering, and she’s come up with a price for her lovely banqueting buffet that is jolly competitive. Ben’s wine merchant chum Dicky Chester-Lewis can let us have all his bin-end cases practically at trade, which is such a saving because I know you’re trying to keep costs low. With a few waiting staff hired in from Marlbury, portaloos, insurance etcetera, we’re looking at no more than twelve or thirteen thousand.’

  Tash closed her eyes, wishing that she had the guts to shout ‘No! Stop this now! I just wanted twenty close friends, love and laughter, shepherd’s pie and good Rioja and Hugo to feel relaxed and happy for once, not all this!’

  But in the same way that she couldn’t stand up to Veruschka about the domestic blitzkrieg, she certainly couldn’t stand up to her sister.

  Instead, she tried to convince herself that a surprise party for Hugo would show him how much she cared. It was her big gesture.

  But as more days passed, their transatlantic phone calls remained horribly stilted and full of practical detail, from her blow-by-blow accounts of dealing with emptying the muck heap and poulticing a hoof abscess, to his long-winded and enthusiastic descriptions of training sessions with Janet Madsen that she wished she could be a part of. But they wanted to keep hearing one another’s voices, even if they weren’t really coming up with what needed to be said. When they did, it inevitably led to conflict:

  ‘How are the horses?’

  ‘Great. We hacked up to Jester’s Copse today. The blackthorn blossom’s out already.’ She’d been joined yet again by Lough, who predictably blanked her chatter about the good sloe gin to come. Now she simply had to talk to Hugo about her worries: ‘I think Lough’s very lonely.’

  ‘So? He’s a loner. Leave him be.’

  ‘I think I should socialise him.’

  ‘He’s not a hound puppy.’ Hugo sounded annoyed.

  ‘He needs to meet other people involved in the sport here.’

  ‘He’ll meet plenty once the season starts.’

  ‘We have to keep our profile up too, Hugo. We need to make the owners feel loved. You’ve been away so much since last autumn that some of them will be wondering what we look like. At least let me invite them to visit, and introduce them to Lough.’

  ‘And let him steal them off us?’

  ‘Why should he want to do that? We’re all on the same team now.’

  ‘He has no scruples. Look at his reputation. He sailed very close to the wind in New Zealand, believe me. He’s untrustworthy.’

  After they rang off, Tash found the house especially lonely, the children asleep and the paperwork beckoning. The evenings seemed interminable.

  She’d stopped thinking of the computer as a fun distraction. Its screen lay as dark as the television in the snug most nights; she preferred real company. But Beccy had become more withdrawn recently, acidic little Lemon unsettled her and Lough was even more intimidating. The big, regular suppers for family, friends and staff were becoming a distant memory.

  Despite Hugo’s disapproval, her social conscience hung heavy. Lough was forking out good money to be based at Haydown and had diligently paid off all his back rent upon arrival, so she felt she owed him more of a return. She could be introducing him to useful contacts during this traditional quiet time in the eventing calendar, when riders partied, hunted, hitched, hatched and holidayed. Networking Lough was a task that would improve her current social life, too; she and Hugo had piles of invitations propped up on the mantelpiece in the hall, but Tash was reluctant to go to anything alone. It seemed ridiculous to ignore the company on her doorstep.

  Defying Hugo’s advice, she decided to offer Lough another peace offering, a savoury olive branch this time, its fruits pressed to oil and used to create something more appetising that Lemon and Beccy could enjoy too.

  When he next hijacked her on one of her solo hacks she turned to him with a determined smile. ‘I’m going to cook all of us supper. Just because Hugo and Rory are away, it doesn’t mean Haydown has no team spirit. It’s much more fun to share food with other people, and I don’t feel I know you at all yet.’

  But Lough’s reaction was even more frosty than usual.

  ‘You know me,’ he muttered into his collar, which was turned up against the chill. Then he kicked his horse into a smart trot and Tash found her young
ster cantering and crabbing excitedly alongside, any further conversation rendered impossible as her nerves gripped at her chest and her hands closed in to tight, defensive fists on the reins, making the horse fight for his head. It took all her concentration to remember to breathe and hang on tight until they got back to the yard, where Lough immediately handed his reins to Lemon, who was waiting with his next horse ready, before riding off to the furthest sand school.

  Left with a sweating horse and a hammering heart, Tash cursed him under her breath and decided Hugo was right; it wasn’t worth the effort.

  *

  But, to her surprise, Lough was sitting on the dog-eared sofa in the kitchen when she came down from putting Cora to bed that evening, leafing through the latest issue of Eventing magazine. His hair was still wet from a shower and he’d dressed in smart brown jeans and a cashmere sweater.

  Still in her filthy breeches, knee-high spotty socks and one of Hugo’s ancient sweaters, Tash hastily poured two massive gin and tonics and apologised for being so disorganised. She was far too polite to point out that her supper invitation had been a general plan, not specifically for that evening, and besides that his reaction had made her think he preferred eating alone. Now he’d caught her wholly unprepared.

  She fought an urge to rush out to the stables flat and beg Beccy and Lemon to join them and liven up the atmosphere a little; she could see Faith’s little yellow car parked alongside Beccy’s and knew it had the makings of a fun night, but Beccy wasn’t answering her mobile, and abandoning Lough to go and recruit more guests looked terribly rude. But Lough in isolation was very hard going.

  It was soon patently obvious that he didn’t do small talk off a horse any more than he did mounted as Tash chattered nervously about the season ahead, about Hugo’s news from America and about horses that she was working. He responded in monosyllables, if at all, watching her from beneath those dark brows as she chopped onions and fried then off, tripping over the dogs.